


coup de grâce

by morningstar921



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Gen, Kylo Ren Redemption, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, because like, but he's trying i guess, but only kind of, man has done some terrible things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 10:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21896428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningstar921/pseuds/morningstar921
Summary: Spoilers for the end of The Rise of SkywalkerKylo Ren must pay for his war crimes.
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 12
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A redemption arc means very little if there's no one around to witness it.

Kylo Ren hauls himself up over the ledge, hand over bloody hand, his dislocated hip a gnawing pain as it dangles uselessly. The rush of air past his ears as Palpatine’s Force had knocked him over into the ravine still roars in his ears. His head is one solid ache, his eyes blurred, and for a moment he thinks he’ll die down here. Alone. 

His chest aches, not from possibly broken ribs, but at the thought of his mother and father. Of Rey, too. It is quiet in the cavern. He’d heard Palpatine’s last cries and wonders if Rey had died in the fight, too. Or maybe he’s lost time down here and she’s already left without him. If, after everything, she still hates him. 

She has every right to, he thinks. It’d be worse if she didn’t. 

Kylo draws a staggering breath and continues up the ledge. He blinks the tears from his eyes.

By the time he reaches the top, draws his broken body up over the edge onto the rocky surface, his lungs feel half deflated and his arms numb. And then he sees Rey collapsed, limbs skewed and so very, very still, and his body moves with fervent power. 

He stumbles, unbearably slow and haltingly with his limp leg, across the cavern to her side. He struggles to arrange his injured leg into a position only a little less than horrifically painful, then gathers Rey’s body into his arms. Kylo chokes. So she is dead. Her head swings back on her rubbery neck until her eyes, fully open but already glassy, stare Kylo down fiercer than they ever had in life. He pulls his arms tighter around her body, tucks his head into the crook of her shoulder, and cries.

It should have been me. After everything, he thinks, it should have been me. He’s the one who tempted her to Exogol. He might as well have dealt the killing blow himself. Forgive me, he thinks, and laughs at himself. Pathetic, to think sorry means anything at all right now.

He prepares himself to leave -- though Palpatine is no more, the First Order or Final Order or whatever still lives. Every small faction, every leftover sympathizer, they’re all his to slaughter if he is ever to repent.

And then he remembers Yavin 4: the saber she’d pierced through his lung, the breathlessness when she snatched it back from his chest, and the sudden headrush of air as she laid her hand on his wound and healed it. He’s seen the Force do many things, but he’s never seen it do that. Not before she did it. (She’s extraordinary, he’d thought, as the mist of bitter seawater hit like acid in his blood. What a foolish thought to have had at a foolish time like that.) His hands no longer shake when he cradles the back of her head with one and places the palm of the other on her stomach. He closes his eyes, and breathes.

* * *

Rey’s eyelids flutter, a shutter of darkness to foggy dark. She lays propped up in someone’s lap. When she opens her eyes fully, she is hardly surprised to see it is Kylo Ren with her in this awful, damp cavern. Ben, she corrects. Not Kylo. Kylo Ren died with her lightsaber in his gut on Yavin 4. This man with tears in his eyes and his teeth grit is hardly the same man who fought like a parody of his grandfather. 

She remembers Palpatine. She remembers his death and her own death, the sudden jolt of losing her limbs like a stringless marionette. You saved me, she thinks. And she breathes his name like a ghost: “Ben.” She watches him come alive around her even as his face goes bloodless and his grip around her slackens. 

With his support no longer holding her upright, Rey sits up of her own power and steadies Ben with her hands on his arms. He’s still teary-eyed but he smiles sincerely for the first time since she’s known him and she can’t help but smile too. Then she’s wrapping herself around him in a warm embrace against the bone-deep chill of this death-filled cavern, breathing into the side of his neck with her hand in his hair. He holds her back. They sit interlocked in the quiet, listening to the thundering of each other’s heartbeats and breath.

They won. They really won.

Ben’s arm suddenly disappear from around her. He slumps against her, his breath shallow. “Ben?” When she pulls away from him, Ben falls backwards completely. It is only her hands fast about his arms that stops his skull from being bashed against the stone. His eyes are closed but rapidly flutter. “Ben! Ben, wake up! Ben!” She brings a hand up to his cheek: cold.

Ben gasps, a ragged thing struggling in the back of his throat. Rey is up in a second, dragging him across the stone floor by the underarms. His lack of complaints at the manhandling is unnerving; he’s the silent, brooding type when he’s not waxing poetic about the Dark Side this or the Dark Side that, but this silence is something stale and shaky. Worried about slicing his back on the stone floor, she crouches down and wrangles his body into a better position. Please be okay, she thinks, and with Ben like a ragdoll around her shoulders, half-supported by the Force, Rey scales the cavern wall back to her ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I understand that Reylo is canon now but I cannot in good faith ship it myself. No judgement or anything, but I can't imagine them as ever being anything more than friends (and with all the terrible things Kylo's done, even that's toeing the line). That being said, I would lowkey love to see how their relationship would complicate the aftermath (assuming Kylo lives). No rebel in their right mind would support their relationship, not when Kylo's a high-ranking war criminal and Rey is the figurehead of their entire movement. Poe would probably self-combust on the spot.


	2. Chapter 2

Rey spends the entire flight from Exogol back to Ajan-Kloss with her body tense in the pilot’s seat. Ben’s breathing doesn’t sound any worse than the way it stammered in the cavern but he doesn’t so much as twitch either, not even when her shaky landing at the rebel base should have startled him awake. 

Finn is the first to rush up to her ship. She sees Poe following close behind Finn, and a little behind him are the droids. As tired as she is, Rey’s lips twitch up. So they survived, too. She marvels at the luck of it all: she’d always imagined victory would be harder and yet, after everything, she still has so much left to hold on to. 

And then, when a hitch in Ben’s breathing snatches her attention, Rey’s smile wilts. She nudges the side of his face and his eyes flutter, then open into slits. Rey is suddenly on her feet. “Ben? Ben, are you awake?” He groans. “I’ll be back,” she says, and opens the gangway of the ship.

“Rey! You’re alive!” Rey is bombarded by Finn’s arms around her as soon as she steps onto solid ground. 

Poe slings an arm around her shoulder and grins. “Good to have you back. And thanks for the tracker signal; that was one hell of a fight you led us to.”

“Missed you too,” Rey says. She pulls the two of them into a tighter hug. Then: “I need a med unit.”

“What?” Finn pulls away sharply. “What happened, are you okay?”

Poe furrows his brow and looks her once over. “You look fine. Or is this some Force-thing I don’t know about?”

She shakes her head. “No -- well, yes, but it’s not for me. It’s for Ben.” The name rolls so well off her tongue she forgets no one knows who that is anymore. “Kylo Ren,” she corrects, and regrets it almost immediately. 

She sees both their faces harden. C-3PO even stumbles back a step with an “oh, my” while R2 and BB8 beep shrilly. 

“Excuse me,” Poe says, “but isn’t this the guy who’s tried to kill us more than once? Who murdered his own father? And you’re telling me he’s what, in your ship? With a boo-boo? Remind me why I’m supposed to care.” 

“Poe, he’s hurt badly. I don’t know how, but --”

“Again, I don’t care. I want him off-base. I want him off the damn planet.”

“You’re being unreasonable!”

“Better yet, take him out of the whole galaxy!”

“He’s changed.”

“Oh, has he?” Poe sneers. “He’s a fucking war criminal, Rey! Forgive me if I question any sudden change of heart.”

Rey turns to Finn, whose stance is stiff and guarded. “I wouldn’t have brought him here if I thought he posed a threat. You have to know that. We’ve seen people defect from the First Order before, why not him? Finn?”

Finn will not look at her. “He chose to be there. I didn’t. A lot of the Stormtroopers didn’t either. It’s different.” He crosses his arms tight over his chest.

Rey doesn’t know what to say. She opens her mouth and stumbles over a hundred different things she could say but none of them get any farther than her throat. 

Wiping his hands sanctimoniously, Poe says, “So that’s it, then.” Poe begins to walk away, to see after one administrative task or another, then seems to think better of it. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he’s quieter than Rey has ever seen him. “But you have to understand where I’m coming from. We don’t have the resources to hold a Force-user captive.”

And she does. As strong as she’s grown under General Leia -- the loss still stings -- Rey knows she could never hold Ben against his will. She’s seen him in the midst of desperation; you can only hold a wild animal for so long before it bites. The damage he could wreak would be devastating, with his without a lightsaber. 

But could she really leave him? Leaving him to die or worse, to stave off the First Order’s attempts to punish a traitor, feels like an insult to the General’s memory. And the sound of his pitiful, rasping breath is an ache in her mind. So Rey pulls out the last stop and says, “I died.”

Finn and Poe stop abruptly. It hurts, to hurt them like this. It feels like picking sides when all she wants is to straddle the middle line.

“Back on Exogol.” Rey draws a deep breath. Her jaws tenses. “ I died, and Ben saved me. So let me save him now. We’ll put him on trial once he’s well. Like you said, he’s a war criminal. I won’t argue with that. But please, please don’t make me abandon him.”

Poe looks sidelong at Finn. Finn stays silent. Poe throws his arms up in exasperation. “This is ridiculous. Do whatever, I don’t care anymore. Just stop calling him Ben, it’s disrespectful.” This time when he leaves, Poe does not turn back at all. Rey just now notices all the people who were staring at her; they resume their work when she brings her eyes level with theirs. 

“I want to trust you, Rey,” Finn says. Her head snaps back to him. He has his hands stuffed into his pockets to keep them from fidgeting. “If he’s really on our side now… I’d be a hypocrite if I kicked him out. But I know the things he’s done and I know you do too.” 

“I know.” Rey’s voice is barely above a whisper.

“Can he walk?” Finn asks. Rey shakes her head. “I’ll have a stretcher sent down.”

Before he can leave, Rey catches Finn by the elbow. “Finn. Thank you.” He nods his head like it might fall off if he jerks it too much, and when he’s gone Rey is alone in the crowded airpad.

* * *

Legs crossed, sitting on the floor beside Ben’s cot in the med tent, Rey passes the next two days in a semi-meditative state. Any passing footsteps, any whistle of a breeze or the slightest shift in Ben’s breathing, has her focus shattered in an instant. She tries not to be gone from his side for too long, but the hours grow stale here and though the war effort no longer needs her exact skill set per say, it still feels wrong to so quickly remove herself from the planning. There are still First Order sympathizers scattered across the galaxy and likely enough rogue battleships to warrant their continued efforts. Early retirement -- if the galaxy can even afford that for a Force-user -- doesn’t seem like it would suit her anyway.

Word of Ben’s presence on the base has spread. The reception is not exactly great, but after Poe’s strangled acceptance, no one openly argues against it. No one mentions it to Rey either, but the doctors who check in on Ben stare at her when come near. They wanted a savior from her; it’s only now when that instinct is inconvenient that they wish she was just another rebel fighter. 

I know what I’m doing, she thinks. This is what’s right. They just need to trust me. 

During these past couple of days, Ben has seemed to hover around consciousness. His breath would pick up and his eyelids would flutter, just as they’re doing now, but he inevitably collapses back into unconsciousness. Rey sighs, adjusts her posture, and tries to sink back into her meditative state. 

There’s a gasping hitch in Ben’s breath, a near-choking sound. His chest lurches off the bed, collapses, and he goes silent again. Rey gets to her feet slowly. His breathing is level now, but his eyebrows are drawn together now. She shakes his shoulder, and his eyes snap open.

Rey is thrust in the air when Ben extends his arm in front of him. It feels as though his own hand is wrapped around her throat, a Force-made noose. “Ben, Ben, it’s me,” she says, but her voice is a quiet, bruised thing. Rey’s hands instinctively raise to loosen the grip on her neck. It’s Ben, the General’s son, she reminds herself. Just Ben Solo, but now with the blank void in his eyes like a mask pulled over his face, Rey sees remnants of the Supreme Leader: a man of violence and tempered rage.

With a shaking hand, she uses the Force to knock Ben’s head back against the cot. His hold on her slackens and she drops. She steadies her footing and says, “You’re safe here, I promise.” And isn’t that a blatant lie, when the commotion has people rushing into the med unit, weapons raised and pointed. 

The blankness in Ben’s eyes lifts a little when Rey draws nearer. “Where am I?”

“A rebel base,” she says. Behind her, someone grunts.

“Oh yeah, sell out our whole operation to the enemy. That won’t ruin everything we’ve worked for.”

Without looking behind her, Rey says, “I wasn’t going to tell him where. It’s nothing he couldn’t figure out on his own.” When no one says anything in return, she shoos them away. “I have it handled.”

When the med unit empties out, Rey approaches Ben. “You saved me life. Thank you.”

Ben nods his head quickly. “You didn’t deserve to die.” He says it so simply, so softly, like there was nothing to it. It wrenches something in Rey’s gut. She doesn’t know how to respond, so she doesn’t. A silence passes between them.

Then: “You said we were at a rebel base, right? Does that mean my mother is here?” The words are forced and hesitant. Rey’s hands go cold. He doesn’t know, she thinks. Oh, he doesn’t know.

“Ben… I’m sorry.” 

“You’re…? Rey, where is my mother?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter! I've realized I have absolutely no idea how to write Rey. Ditto for the droids, oof. It's a learning curve.
> 
> In other news: I'd like to have the next chapter up by Jan 19, hopefully my muse cooperates. I desperately need to rewatch Force Awakens and Last Jedi for context. I have forgotten nearly everything that happens in them, especially Force Awakens. I'm even forgetting TROS already. Like, does Kylo find out in that movie that his mother dies? Who knows, I sure don't.


End file.
